


John & Co: Make Him Pay

by Classpectanon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Branching Paths, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Closure, Cover Art, Epilogue, Epilogue Spoilers, Illustrations, Meta, Metafiction, Post-Canon, The Homestuck Epilogues, Unreliable Narrator, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-01-23 06:35:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18544282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Classpectanon/pseuds/Classpectanon
Summary: John Egbert got back up.





	1. Cover

**Author's Note:**

> Epilogue Spoilers. Obviously.


	2. Chapter 2

John Egbert got back up.

It was a groggy feeling, being taken out the way you were - and he had to say, he really didn't like being dead, for real. He looked at the ceiling, polished, slick Skaianet metal, and down at his chest, corpse still dressed like it was a veritable aeon ago. Out here in the furthest reaches of the narrative, against this #333333 space in a dubiously canonical sky, he clutched for his chest, a scar long since closed up twitching against the hole in his God Tier pajamas.

He got up, immediately bumping his head into some kind of glass tube, and letting out a little cuss under his breath. The noise was soft, almost 'doink'-like, as memories filled him. Memories he wasn't sure were his own. He could see it in his dreams.

An infinite canvas of lives worth living.

The grand strings of a princely puppeteer.

There was no reason for John to get up, none at all, save for the fact that it was wanted, and willed into being by a paltry observer. He thumped against his glass enclosure a couple of times, arms aching from years of disuse, pulling off the wires strapped to him - but it was too late to un-heed their cry. When the glass cage slid aside like a door opening into the real world, he was greeted by a face that was so shocked it had wrapped around into disgusted. Terezi Pyrope loomed over him like a nightmare, casual clothes freshly laundered, mouth agog, eyes hidden behind broken red shades. That was a little funny to John. How much older - and then, just how much the same - she looked. It was like she hadn't aged a day. It was like she had aged a googol of  _kalpa_.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, her voice all sharp angles and broken glass. Nope, hadn't changed an inch.

"Where's here?" John asked back with a quirked eyebrow, hopping out of the little bed with a hup. When he turned around to look, his eyes narrowed with realization while he adjusted his glasses.

He wasn't lying in a bed. He was lying in a coffin.

"Dirk isn't really the kind of person who cares about ship names," Terezi replied, nonchalantly, as if she didn't just see her ex-flame, the one whose death drove her to all this, literally step out of his coffin/monitoring chamber as if nothing was happening whatsoever. She let out a little chuckle. It was high and reedy and it made John feel a little warmer inside, like he was sitting by a Christmas tree, a fire smoking up the fireplace. "Not for this one, I mean."

"I'm going to pretend I understand wh-"

John almost managed to get to the end of his sentence before Terezi punched him in the face. A full force, lanky-armed, legislacerator wallop that sent him reeling like a boxer in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, skipping along on his heel a couple of times and then falling onto his back. 

"You left." She says, her voice full of matter-of-fact vitriol. She gets John up, grabbing his hand. Her fingers are bony and knife-like, like the edge of a stiletto heel, her nails digging into his wrist just a little bit. She feels fragile and dangerous at the same time, like his very presence has disrupted some kind of intricate spiderweb of plots and plans, woven in yarn and copper wire. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears the clanking of gears and mechanisms. He's not sure if it's in the ship's walls or just in his head. 

"And... now I'm back! Sorry. How long was I out?" John asked, with a half-goofy half-smile. Terezi's body convulsed, first a tiny twitch of the toes, and then up her shins, into her stomach. A full body convulsion that almost looks like she's about to puke, until she bursts out laughing. It's a gorgeous laugh, terrible and gorgeous, like a witch's cackle. A laugh you'd wait another half an eternity to hear, easily. No contest, no challenge. She punches him on the shoulder, but it's not the same slug that caused blood to drip out of his nose at a steady dribble. It's more of a kind of bump he'd see Dave give Karkat.

And then she pulled him into a hug.

It was the kind of squeeze he really, really needed.

Comfort.


	3. Chapter 3

TEREZI: PSST.  
TEREZI: PSST. MR N4RR4TOR M4N.

I'm shocked, positively shocked by this sudden burst of narrative defiance from one of my action figures. I'm kidding. She can talk. Her hand is clasped to John's while they sit in a room normally reserved for several soldiers at a time, now converted into a one-woman hideaway for Terezi to luxuriate in when her mind is unrestrained from Dirk's narrative control - or mine, I guess, but I need to describe and populate the space anyway, to fill you with a sense of veracity and verisimilitude. If you've read any of my other works, you'd know it's a pattern by now. "Who are you-" John asks, but Terezi shushes him with a quick finger to the lips. Thwap!

TEREZI: C4N YOU M4K3 SUR3 M3 4ND JOHN T4LK L1K3 TH1S FROM NOW ON?  
TEREZI: 1 KNOW K1ND OF HOW D1RK'S POW3R WORKS.  
TEREZI: 4ND 1 DON'T KNOW WHO YOU 4R3 BUT 1 GU3SS YOU'R3 PR3TTY CLOS3?

Got it in one. Clever girl. John looks confused, but sits down anyway.

TEREZI: 1T'S 34S13R TO T4LK TH1S W4Y.

Sure. You haven't wronged me, so I can acquiesce to that.

JOHN: who are you talking to?  
TEREZI: DON'T WORRY 4BOUT 1T, N3RD.

She gives his hair a playful tousle while we take the camera around the room, letting them be on the bunk-bed for a little bit. Who am I to intrude? They have some catching up to do.

Terezi Pyrope lives on a two-floor Skaianet Lightcruiser, made for going fast with a small payload. There's an alchemiter on board and every so often, when she forgets to eat, Rosebot pops her dainty head in for a reminder. Terezi is often unsure whether that's Rosebot, or just Dirk with his hand up her metaphysical Kermit the Frog asshole, just making sure she hasn't starved herself to death out of regret. Terezi wouldn't do that, though. Her room is decorated lavishly in a vaguely adultish rerepresentation of her childhood, with many plushies stacked about here and there, mostly draconic, although a single yellow salamander sits at an almost revered place atop a desk. She has a laptop (it's different from a husktop in a way that makes her just slightly uncomfortable whenever she clacks about on its keyboard) there, but rarely uses it except to draw over pictures from the archives of the old internet.

Her connection to the outside world is, for the most part, severed. In this off-white space, things like "a stable internet connection", or even "an internet connection at all" are really kind of nonentities. The only single string remaining for her is her cell phone, still connected to Earth C. She's reasonably certain by now that it's not the Earth C she left from, but it is an Earth C, and Vriska is there. Two of them, actually, and sometimes she hears about the Lalonde one. It helps keep her a little sane. Sometimes, she feels like she's teetering on the edge of the same abyss that Rosebot and Dirk have fallen into, even without having gone God Tier, the temptation is still there. The call of the abyss. She's no idiot, though. She's seen what Dirk and Rosebot have become, in the moments of narrative clarity between her reality and this one.

TEREZI: GOT TH4T R1GHT.

She interrupts her little interlude with John just to confirm my suspicions, at least in this extracanonical space. Next to Terezi's salamander plush is a canister of alchemized Skoal in some weird, red, Terezi-focused flavor, so when they're close enough that John can smell her breath, the tobacco scent makes him feel at ease. Sleepy, even though he just woke up from the world's longest dirt nap. She doesn't even use it right. She just eats it. The room is arranged simply, with the bunk bed featuring her favorite ghosty sheets, neatly made, pushed into the far left corner opposite the door, her working desk at the opposite corner (right, and next to the door), and then her toy pile and practice nooses occupying the other corner. There used to be other bunk beds in here, but they were removed, to make room. The faint scent of permanent marker taints the air from doodles on the polished metal walls.

When they're finished (it takes a couple of minutes. It might be feverish, rough intercourse, or maybe they're just talking about things, with Terezi getting John up to speed. Or some kind of cuddle. Or a kiss. A long, rambling disambiguation that only serves to add more open possibilities for your mind to arrive at. Maybe the author will clarify in a separate tale, but maybe he won't. Right now, consider what exactly they're finishing "Up to you"), Terezi looks at nowhere in particular, her thumb ghosting over John's knuckles, both of them lying on her bed the wrong way, legs dangling off. I'm not describing their dressedness status for a reason.

JOHN: so what now?  
TEREZI: HMM.  
TEREZI: M4YB3 1 SHOULD F1LL YOU 1N 4 L1TTL3 MOR3.  
TEREZI: WH4T DO YOU KNOW 4BOUT D1RK STR1D3R?

Oh, I think that's her trying to tell me to move on. Alright folks, chop chop, let's change scenes!


	4. Chapter 4

Something feels off.

I would say some lame shit like "there's been a disturbance in the force", but it's less of that, more of just some subtle feeling of wrongness that tickles my bones. I might be gay, but I'm not lame. There's a strong delineation between the two.

So, let's set the scene for you since you haven't had enough of me yet and you literally had to follow me this far away from the ending. That's okay, I get it. I'm hot shit. I'm important. I'm what the kids say, "hip" and "happening". I'm the most important villain in the entire story. It's been a couple of years since you saw me and my compatriots last. I've got this shit on lockdown. There are 5 people chasing me in a slightly slower ship, and by the time they get here, I'll have already won. Rosebot is busy writing, since that seems to be the thing that occupies most of her time. Like I said before, there wasn't a need to bring a lot with her, so she's been making most of her own books to read. I think her latest series is a reworking of Complacency of the Learned. I haven't read a lot of it since I haven't had the time.

Terezi's locked up in her room more often than not. I don't blame her, I wouldn't want to be in my presence for longer than was absolutely necessary. Maybe I'm the one making her find distaste in the proposition, and you'd enjoy that, right? Feel vindicated, even? That her time spent scribbling on the walls like a prophet and pining over a literal one-timeless/spaceless expanse-stand is entirely motivated by me? Maybe it is. I'll let you have the satisfaction of your hatred, while I get to my actual important shit.

Right now, that's practice. I've always been one of the best goddamn swordsmen on the planet, and now I'm going to be the best goddamn swordsman in all of Paradox Space. My technique is impeccable. My katana? Unbreakable. You already know about the forged from a roaring manga fire thing, so I'm not going to reiterate myself to remind you if you don't. That's your fault for not remembering all the tiniest, insignificant details of our story. [Have a reminder, I guess, should you really want one.](https://www.homestuck.com/story/4518) 

So, yeah, back to me being awesome. It's not like there's a danger room on this ship, but the whole Ultimate Alchemy thing provided us with literally far more grist than it's really humanly possible to use even with a veritable infinity afforded to you. It's absolutely bonkers bananas off the chain-hook. A fuckton of grist. So I have my Dirkbots all at the ready, and I ask for them, five at a time. They all think like me. They all look like me except shiny and chrome, too, and they're all as smart as I am. Don't hope for some kind of rebellion, though. They all know that their inevitable end comes with the benefit of fulfilling my ultimate goal.

I block a slash, a swipe, I jump over one sword. I get knicked across the cheek with a forward thrust, searing past my skin before I retaliate in kind by lopping his wrist off, and then elbow, shoulder, and head, in that order. The pile of decapitated Dirks never stops growing. Four swords come at me and I block them with the sound of metal grinding against metal. My muscles are good, but they're not robot good, and I have to jump up several feet to avoid getting quartered. It's not an experience I'm unused to, but villains don't die when they're level grinding, and my God Tier jammies have an expert seamstress keeping them stitched together. She's really good at her job. I picked out my certain brand of orange thread so that it's plainly visible against the, frankly, super gay pinkish Heart colors. By now, my clothes look almost Frankensteinian.

It's a reminder to myself, of everything I've sacrificed to come this far, and all the effort I've gone through. Don't you forget it.

I hover in the air for a hot second as the ship's artificial gravity remembers that it should be tugging me down right now, and land on the crossed intersection of swords like a badass, repeating the thrust that left me with a slight sting on the side of my face. I impale one of the Dirkbots through their heart symbol and somersault over them, gratuitously bisecting my mechanical doppelganger. The three remaining Dirkbots stare at me and offer their most providential thumb downs. The great thing about robots is that the most offensive usage of my power doesn't work as directly on them, so I have to learn real martial skill. Like, sure, I can force lightning the sentience out of them, but that's not helpful to me becoming a better sword fighter. And I'm gonna need every ounce of practice I can get.

I respond to their thumbs down with one of my own, sheathing my katana. When two of them attempt to strafe around to my sides, pinch me in against the wall, I shut my eyes, feeling my own heartbeat. There's the sound of whirring metal, just loud enough to replicate breathing.

I am the fucking katana master.

I iaijutsu that shit with the loudest kiai I can muster. I flash step across the room, blade drawn, tip of my katana just barely touching the wall. The third Dirkbot, the one in the middle, shudders, before a clean diagonal cut separates one arm from the other, and then the rest of the torso, slowly sliding down. The other two Dirkbots harden their resolve. I see Rosebot watching from the doorframe, and almost get distracted enough to take a sudden impalation through the heart, but instead, it rams through my shoulder blade. I turn around, grab the sword, and yank it out, the approaching gush of blood streaking across Dirkbot's optical sensors as I tug his Breakable Katana out of his hand and ram the hilt through the other remaining Dirkbot's head. Obviously, it cuts my hand, so I grab the polished lump of the last Dirkbot's hair, now that he's disarmed, and go for both arms. Then, both legs. Finally, a sword through the neck. It has a couple of moments of frenzied, spastic stuttering, before I remove my blade and it collapses.

Rosebot's clapping is a perfect, 50/50 mixture of sincerity and sarcasm. "Impressive. You'll be well-prepared to go after any katana wielders coming our way, which, I do believe, numbers exactly zero."

"Bite me." I snip back, wiping grease and oil off my blade with a small, stained cloth before sheathing it quietly. "What do you want?"

"Nothing in particular." She says, as I brusquely push past her. Unlike her, I still have to eat sometimes. "I just imagine that you'd like to know that John Egbert is awake."

_**What?**_


	5. Chapter 5

"-So the primary failure of said neoliberal austerity measures is their consolidation of political power amongst the upper echelons of society - kind of like when you get that weird gunk at the top of your soup when you put it in the fridge for too long and then you don't want it because you accidentally poke the fat layer that's so gross and slimy you can never look at it the same way again - while doing little to nothing to prevent extreme stratification, effectively turning the government into a puppet of the highest bidder,"

"Mmhmm."

"And this is a bad thing, because it does nothing to incentivize increasing the velocity of a particular dollar and, in fact, creates an immense amount of economic pressure on the lower and middle class until it inevitably all falls apart with a bloodbath that would make Elizabeth Batory and Vlad Dracul's ectobiological lovebaby blush themselves to death."

"Yep!"

It's not like it's the first time Aradia has heard this ramble, but even the fifteenth thousandth version of having it explained to her by a robotic Dave Strider was a little exciting. Paradox Space was an odd place to be in at this time of forever - an endless expanse of white, rather than of black. No stars, but if she turned her head and looked backward, sometimes, depending on the angle, she could see the tiny dot that was Calliope in the distance, containing all of the unreal, the conditionally truthful. The non-canon. At this point, their continuous forward motion was no less assured than... Well. Thinking about it, Aradia couldn't come up with anything that was so appropriately assured. Ahead of them, just the right distance that she could be seen but not interacted with, Jade's body shot forward at unfathomable speeds, her powers dragging Aradia and Davebot along with her in her wake.

"Which is why I'm personally in favor of a system based on something called "Universal Basic Income", which the Post-Scratch Dave was really interested in but he couldn't articulate it in a way that didn't sound batshit bananas."

"The one where everyone gets a certain stipend each month that's enough to cover for basic living costs?"

"Did we have this conversation already?"

"No, we just had something like that on Alternia that's close enough that I think I can understand it by name!"

"Yeah?"

"Mmhmm! It was segregated by bloodcaste but Alternia was already a, I think it's "Post-Scarcity Economy"? Most material needs were producible on a whim for the state but they were forced to trickle down from highbloods, who received monthly Caegar allowances ranging in the millions, to lowbloods, where my caste received a fairly meager six thousand or so caegars per month."

"So highbloods just had a big Scrooge McDuck vault where they kept all their fat state-distributed loot to swim around in when they didn't feel the overwhelming urge to go hunting for lucky pennies? Just keep accumulating little metal disks like a fat feathery bastard until their accreted mass collapses into a black hole big enough to contain all the variable distributions of canon and non-canon currencies in every possible arrangement, until Scrooge eats a baseball-eyed Donald Duck and gets the sheer monetary chutzpah to escape its grasp and manifest into our horrific reality?"

"No, the physical currency went out of favor at the same time all the adults left," Aradia explained, trying to hide a chuckle at Dave's ostentatiously amusing rambles. She made a small gesture with her fingers to point them into the distance like she's gesturing to an invisible fleet. "By our time on the planet most reasonably large transactions were done through credit chits."

"Is that a chitin pun? Because I know you guys all start as grubs and all that but, really, I've fucked a troll in most of my timelines, sometimes two. We're not _that_ different. Like, a little grey facepaint and a headband and you've got yourself a perfectly serviceable troll right there, all dressed up and ready to go door to door candy-grubbing on Halloween, and have people ask what you are so you're like 'I'm a Troll, dumbass!', and depending on the timeline they'll either look at you like you've got two heads or go 'Yeah but which one?' and either way you're not getting candy so you just go home and steal your dad's bourbon instead until you throw up in the toilet."

"No, Dave!" Aradia said with a mixture of mock and genuine exasperation. "We went from coinage to bills, and sometimes electronically stored and signed cards. Plus, chitin isn't pronounced like that."

"Well this is a text-based medium so the chitin pun works at face value unless you know how it's actually pronounced, which, by the way, is 'kite-n', not 'chit-in', but right now I must sound like I'm absolutely taking an acrobatic fucking pirouette off at least fifteen handles, so I'll just let that particular fallow field lay untended while we move on to the next Striderism."

Aradia looked at him with her jaw agape, and didn't say anything for the next six seconds. She managed to wrench it shut and decided to look forward instead, back towards Jade.

"So, do you know when we're getting there, Dave?" She asked, her butterfly wings lazily beating back and forth in Jade's wake.

"Assuming my watch is right, let's say... Four chapters."  



	6. Chapter 6

The stars zoom by at unbearable speeds, even in the throes of warp velocity, turning into white and off-blue and off-red streaks against the windows. Aboard the bridge of the  _HMS Princehunter_ (Jake didn't know what HMS stood for off-hand, but he knew ships were named that, and so it was named. Every crewmember aboard outside of Jade had their own opinion on what it stood for, now), Jade stared blankly, a headband fitted neatly into place behind her doggy ears. Jury-rigging a navigation system to her was easy enough with Roxy and Jake's efforts, and it left her with more energy to protect them from Dirk's influence, although this was something they were generally unaware of.

A stack of plates neatly rested on a nearby shelf. The bridge had been turned into Jade's chamber, and despite her lack of responsiveness, it had been dressed up in Jade's way. A comfortable bed to rest on, blankets and pillows and her clothes in a hamper, gadgets and gizmos, stuffed animals put there in an attempt to rouse her that ultimately failed. Every day, someone got to get Jade out of the bed and walk her around to avoid atrophy. Typically, this was Roxy's job. Breakfast and dinner were also supplied, usually by Dave or Karkat, and every two days, she was bathed and re-dressed, a duty almost always undertaken by Kanaya. Like the saying goes, it takes a village to keep one of your best friends who has become the conduit for some kind of spooky alien goddess from wasting away in her coma-trance.

Calliope can tell, from inside of Jade, that she's no longer the narrator. As she said, she's divested control of the story. To me, in particular. Her statement was general, but I've decided that it is for me. Still, she's useful as a barrier, because I may need help keeping Dirk out. He's already eaten an entire chapter to himself, the vorehound.

Don't worry, though. Jade will get her swings in.

What kind of justice fic would this be without it?

Jake monitors the systems, sitting on a stool, hand on Jade's. Thinking about her as his daughter was kind of a foreign experience, but thinking about her as his mother wasn't right either, so he normally just thought of her as "family", his thumb rubbing at the side of her pinky.

JAKE: You feel that too jade?  
JAKE: Im not sure what it is but...

What he's feeling is a little something called "narrative significance", and he's feeling it because I've pulled back a layer of curtains. Normally, this would be a John Egbert exclusive hunch. Maybe Terezi or Roxy, but I need something for them to look forward to, so I give their brains a little peek behind the curtain.

John Egbert's coming, after all.

JAKE: For some reason im getting this feeling that everythings about to turn up aces?

He squeezes her hand, and Jade slowly turns her hand back up and squeezes his. Jake's eyes bug out a little bit, but she returns her hand to its typical position, and the moment passes.

* * *

Roxy turns to face the specter of Rose, watching it slip out of his fingers. Every time he tries to focus on it, it goes away, a little haunting melody accompanied by the ramshackle sounds of chainsaws grinding against metal. You'd be surprised by how quickly you can run out of conversation topics in three years. At this point, Roxy just watched the carnage go every time it flew by.

It wasn't like there was a need for many confrontations in the years leading up to this point, mostly just the occasional argument or spat, nothing that required violence. Only Jake and Dirk had kept up to snuff on their combat capabilities before Dirk fucked off into space, so they all had to keep their skills sharp somehow. With the onboard alchemiter, that meant creating bot after bot to scrap and then recycle into more bots. It was hard to put together exact replicates of Brobot, but Roxy and Jake were smart enough to get reasonable duplicates of their eventual antagonist.

Roxy sighed as Kanaya's chainsaw belt snapped, lashing out and ripping the head of the last Brobot in half. There were no lavish action scene descriptions here, just the inevitable result of the chain against metal. A pile of snapped, imperfect katanas lay in the corner as a reminder of what they're here to do.

What they'll eventually have to do.

Kanaya sighed, letting her chainsaw fold back into its lipstick carrying form, still weighing about as much as a chainsaw, tucking it away for later use. Three years of near constant martial training had rendered them all a little leaner than before. Not exactly ripped, but Kanaya never had a reason to regularly lug around 15 pounds or more of chainsaw, and now she did, and you could see it in her arms when she tensed and pulled the ripcord. Roxy had a gun, but he could also handle a katana like the best of them, Jake could pin mechanical arms made for nothing but strength into the ground, and Dave and Karkat were so in-sync that they didn't even need to talk. When they fought in the "Danger Room", as Dave had termed it, it was like watching two professional dancers waltz.

Roxy tossed another lipstick container Kanaya-ward, and she gracefully took it into her hands, tossing the broken one to Roxy's side. It would be recycled into grist and used probably for more Brobots, or probably for more chainsaws. Everyone except for Roxy was preparing with new weapons, but Roxy felt like it wouldn't be right for him to personally confront Dirk with anything other than the Unbreakable Katana. His hair had grown out into a messy but manageable tangle of brownish curls, no longer putting in the effort to bleach or dye anything, cutting with a sword instead of scissors.

He didn't realize how the staccato cowlicks made him look just a bit like John Egbert. 

* * *

Dave and Karkat sat, exhausted, in their bunk bed, watching one of a million random, unimportant Alternian romantic comedies on the television. Muscles sore from the day's Brobot-crushing, Dave's sword lay regrettably on a stand on the wall, while Karkat's sickle was hung up on a small hook. Dave could tell that it was coming up, even though they didn't see Dirk's ship on any sensors or radars. He just knew.

DAVE: hey  
KARKAT: HEY.

They leaned into a pillow set up against the wall, Dave's arm around Karkat's shoulders. Karkat's knees were pulled up to his chest, a blanket thrown over them, Dave's sunglasses lazily laying on the bed where a head would normally go. Unlike Roxy, he had kept up with his bleaching. If Roxy was going to be Dirk's antithesis, then Dave needed to be his mirror, to show him the way he could be.

Dave didn't want to fight Dirk.

It wasn't much of a secret, even though nobody talked about it out loud.

DAVE: is it just me or is there something funky in the air  
DAVE: like did jake fuck with the ac again or what  
KARKAT: NO, THERE'S DEFINITELY SOMETHING.  
KARKAT: I'M NOT SURE *WHAT* BUT YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE.  
DAVE: alright cool i just wanted to make sure i wasnt having phantom narrative significance again  
DAVE: like when roxy decided to cut his hair with a sword for the first time because we let him watch too much naruto  
DAVE: and it felt like we were about to just crash into b  
DAVE: crash into dirk the next minute  
DAVE: one of those shitty traffic accidents that people laugh about on americas funniest home videos because how did you not see it coming  
DAVE: but nah he just cut his hair and then two years later and its back  
DAVE: that feeling not his hair  
KARKAT: YEAH, LAST TIME I THOUGHT YOU WERE FULL OF SHIT, CONSIDERING YOUR GENERAL PROPENSITY FOR COPROPHAGIA.  
KARKAT: BUT NO, WE'RE DEFINITELY ON THE SAME PAGE HERE.  
DAVE: cool

* * *

John Egbert arrived on the  _HMS Princehunter_ with a flash of blue and white.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Alright, this is fine. I'm cool. I'm collected. And, most importantly, I'm in control of the situation.

But I'm definitely a little angry and thrown off kilter. Really, I should've seen this coming. The person who deigns himself a protagonist getting back up from a lethal injury, purportedly to save the day? It's narrative 101. It's a fucking deus ex machina, that's what, and it means that someone's been fucking around in my story. I wonder if it's Calliope, has she somehow managed to catch up to me already?

Doubtful.

It must mean that someone else is interfering with the narrative, a variable I haven't accounted for. After fifteen minutes sulking in the danger room like the disaster gay I know I am deep in my heart, I set out on my quest.

The first step is obviously Rosebot, since the only other person ascended to their ultimate self is probably the only other person with that sort of control. She can hear my footsteps coming, I'm not exactly one for subtlety when I'm pissed. Generally, I'm not one for subtlety at all. My shoes clack against the floor as I make my way to the bridge, where I know Rosebot is, because I say she is, and she spends most of her time there because I say she does. Are you getting it now?  _I'm_ in control here.

I grab Rosebot from behind and she pretends to be surprised as she whirls around to face me. My katana is at her neck, and that surprises her. Would I do it? Again, doubtful, but it pushes just a little bit closer into her metal, the tip dipping into her, and she knows I mean business. She's incapable of calling my bluff because I'm not letting her.

Rosebot spills her guts and tells me everything she knows. She tells me everything. She tells me everything.

"You know that I don't have the same level of control as you do," Rose says, mechanically, confirming my suspicions. I don't accept her answer, and dig my katana just a little bit closer. I need to make sure that she's not just regurgitating my own words through her mechanical throat. Talk to me, Rosebot. Tell me the truth.

"Tell me the truth," I command, and her synthetic muscles twitch underneath her mechanical skin. I can't tell if she's resisting or just panicked. Ultimately, the reason she's here with me is that she's as afraid of death as I am, even if her idea of death might be more pedestrian than mine. She was afraid of losing herself, I'm afraid of the story ending. See how different it is in scope? She's selfish, and she knows it. Her concern is with her own mortality, my concern is far wider-reaching. Sure, she's closer to her ultimate self now, all contained within that robot body, but ultimately I think she's still afraid of death. Too human by half, even in steel.

"I haven't done a single thing that could possibly jeopardize our plans. All I've been doing is writing, cleaning, and preparing for our arrival at the planet." She says, and I think, for a moment, if that satisfies me. I let go of her shoulder.

"Fundamentally, you and I both know that writing is an act of creation. To write is to will something into being from the splinters of whatever higher realm our Ultimate Selves exist upon." I tell her, and push my blade just a millimeter deeper before dropping it.  "Your wizard-fic. Give them all to me. I'm burning them."

She pulls the best crestfallen expression a robot could possibly perform because I allow her to do so.  "Yes, Father." , she intones, and we spend the next five minutes with her taking me to every place she's stored her wizard fiction, making a big pile in the danger room. I soak it with the oily blood of my machines and then pull some quick rewiring to turn a coil hot enough to start a fire. I stand back and warm my hands.

"Get Terezi." I order, and she obeys. The fire in the center of the room illuminates me from behind, in the most absurdly dramatic way possible, turning me into a silhouette ringed by orange and red. It's highly stylistically appropriate. Bon voyage, Calmasis. Rest in shit.

Her arrival is swift, darkening the doorway of my training room with her pointy form. She exists like a bag of protractors - a highly absurd conglomeration of angles and spikes, and why are they even in a bag? Yet still, she persists. She walks quickly, for a blind girl.

TEREZI: 1 C4N ST1LL S33, DUMB4SS

Okay, first off, how the fuck are you speaking like that?

TEREZI: WOULDN'T YOU L1K3 TO KNOW?

Yes. I would. That's why I'm asking.

Wait. No, hold on, you're speaking  _normally_ , and everyone else... We've been speaking in the narrative. What the fuck?

TEREZI: >:]

Don't shoot your smug fucking grin at me like that you troglodyte. She's paralyzed, suddenly, her weird alien think pan decides to betray her, causing her muscles to lock up. She tries to speak, but her lips are sealed shut by her own jaw. The room is warm, and as a highblood, her body temperature is lower than mine, so she's already begun to sweat, while I'm cool as a cucumber behind this cozy book fire. I grab her by the scruff of her shirt, lift her up, and start dragging her stiff form out of the doorway, around the bonfire, and to the other side of the room. The door shuts and seals itself locked, and I pin her up against the wall. My one hand on her shoulder, my other holding the sword just right.

Nothing like a good, old-fashioned narrative repetition to get the point across. I drag my katana up from her collar all the way to her throat, tracing a little line of faint teal. Not blood, but the skin is raised nonetheless, like it's preparing to be cut. Her breathing is shallow, trying not to push her neck into my blade. Smart girl. Her muscles unclench. Tell me what's going on.

TEREZI: YOU'R3 GO1NG TO H4V3 TO 4SK, F1RST

I just did.

TEREZI: W1TH YOUR MOUTH, STR1D3R  
TEREZI: YOU KNOW, L1K3 US NORM4L P3OPL3?

Even me slamming her against the wall, watching her head bounce, isn't enough to wipe that smug fucking grin off her face.  "Fine. Talk."

TEREZI: TH3R3'S 4NOTH3R N4RR4TOR

"Yeah, I gathered as much." I respond, already getting really tired of this trite dialogue format bullshit. Terezi is going to be speaking in narrative now, like me.

TEREZI: H4H4H4, NO 1'M NOT

"If you keep this up, I'm going to stab you." I say, with no malice or ill-intent to my voice whatsoever. It's just the facts at this point. If she's not going to be useful to me, I'll stab her and make sure I don't have to think about her again as a variable. She's not God Tier, and we're currently outside the confines of a Sburb session, so there's no dreamself for her to revive. Plus, even if there was, who'd possibly kiss her, John? Get real.

TEREZI: D1RK STR1D3R >:[  
TEREZI: TH1S 1S H1GHLY 1N4PPROPR14T3 B3H4V1OR COM1NG FROM SOM3ON3 OF YOUR SUPPOS3D ST4TUR3  
TEREZI: SUCH 4 BR4Z3N SOL1C1T4T1ON FROM 4 HUM4N WHO CL41MS TO B3 NOT 1NT3R3ST3D 1N TH3 F3M1N1N3?

What? No, I'm. I'm not hateflirting with you, you dumb fucking alien, I'm trying to  _stop John Egbert_ , goddamnit. Fuck.

TEREZI: H4H4H4H4H4H4H4H4  
TEREZI: YOU'R3 SO B4D 4T 1NT3RROG4T1ON, 1T'S 3MB4RR4SS-

Wait, shut the fuck up. That was 8 ha's. You're talking to Vriska.

TEREZI: WH4T?

Don't play dumb, Terezi. I know the scent of a spotlight hog when I smell it. You don't laugh in eights. Vriska does. Terezi is filled with the sudden, incoherent urge to tell me how she's talking to Vriska.

TEREZI: FUCK YOU

She's covered in sweat, which might be from the fire, or might be from nervousness. I'll chalk it up to nervousness. The symptom fits, right? She's so incredibly nervous she's shaking, and look at that, the symptom fits. She's shaking and sweaty, so she  _must_ be nervous. Terezi tells me how she's talking to Vriska.

TEREZI: FUCK YOU

"Tell me how you're talking to Vriska." I demand, and drive the tip of my sword just a hair closer to her neck. She spits at me, which is awfully rude of her.  "The fact that you're not actively denying it means that my somewhat spurious guess is actually correct."

Any communication devices she's using to talk to Vriska suddenly alight with a notification. I listen closely.

I grab her cell phone out of her pocket, letting her drop off the wall for a moment, and look to see pages of unimportant blue. What, did you want to read them? Tough shit. I yeet that fucking cell phone into the book fire. Rest in piss, Spiderbitch. My hand returns to her shoulder.

Anyway, back to the point.  "Where is John Egbert?"

TEREZI: >:]  
TEREZI: H3'S GON3, D1RK  
TEREZI: H3'S OUTS1D3 YOUR R34CH  
TEREZI: 4ND, 3V3N FUNN13R, H3 L3FT WH1L3 YOU W3R3 BURN1NG ROS3'S BOOKS!

My grip tightens to the point where I threaten to shatter Terezi's shoulder. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't skewer you right now?"

TEREZI: UNL1K3 YOU, 1'M NOT 4FR41D OF D34TH  
TEREZI: 1'M JUST TOUGH3R TH4N YOU  
TEREZI: MY L1F3 W4S H4RD3R  
TEREZI: 1'M M4D3 OF ST3RN3R STUFF  
TEREZI: GO 4H34D. THROW MOR3 BR1CKS ON YOUR K4RM1C SC4L3S  
TEREZI: 1T'S NOT L1K3 YOU 4R3N'T 4LR34DY FUCK3D B3YOND B3L13F

I grit my teeth and press my katana closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? Should I kill her? I know you'll all be screaming in your peanut gallery seats "No, don't do it," but think about it. I'm the bad guy. Is it in character for me to kill her? Would I kill her for slighting me like this? I can't guarantee your vote will mean anything in the long run, but I'm personally curious. As the kids say, "Vote now on your phones", in the comment section below, or [in this strawpoll](https://www.strawpoll.me/17954115). I look forward to hearing your answers.


	8. Chapter 8

"Hey, Dirk? Can we talk? For, like, a second?"

It was as anticlimactic as it was startling. John Egbert, with an entire spaceship in tow. Tethers screamed across the blank void, jets curling them around Dirk's ship, gravitic boarding processes aligned to allow the smoothest capture. Now, it was just two starships aligned in fair dignity. The pulsing heartbeat of engine thrum curled through the matched metal, but no boarding occurred. John disappeared for a short moment, and then re-appeared again, and in rather no time at all, you had a bunch of people in a room staring at each other awkwardly.

But more than awkwardness was the kind of stare they all shared towards Dirk, looking inscrutable as ever from his shades. But if we had to arrange it in a more orderly fashioned, you had both Dave and Davebot staring intermittently at each other, and then Rosebot, each one thinking the same thing. Rosebot looked at Kanaya once, and then to the floor for the rest of the next three minutes. Kanaya kept her eyes affixed to Rosebot. Jake and Karkat weren't sure what to do with their eyes, and ended up flitting them across everyone equally. Terezi was battered and bruised in the corner, and didn't seem to be looking at anything in her unconscious state. Looks like he didn't go through with it after all - 65 votes, though, at the time of writing. I think you guys might've convinced him, but I'm not in his head enough to tell. Jade, resting on a fashionable little cane, was looking around in awe, not at anyone, but at all the things. Calliope, the elder, black-eyed one in 16-year-old Jade, stared holes at Dirk. Aradia was just watching the mood. Roxy was watching John. John was watching Dirk.

Dirk was staring at me.

It's hard to explain what it means to stare at the narrator, since I hadn't set up a camera angle in this. If you can imagine one, it's likely swooping and weaving, getting us shot after shot of the various glarings in an anime-like mesh of imagery... No, just me? Whatever. Either way, wherever your mental camera of the scene is, Dirk is staring right at it. If he's staring at me, by extension, he's staring at you. So just picture that, and you'll get an accurate representation of what the scene is looking like.

John was wondering what Dirk was staring at, as the silence continued, unabated, for three whole minutes. The only reason Calliope wasn't being spooky and saying something ominous is because I wanted to stretch out this awkward silence for far longer than was reasonable, but then, she was the first to jostle it.

"Prince." She said, raising her hand, her fingers flexing as if preparing to do something with no take-backsies. John flipped around like a top with a little refreshing gust of wind, blowing sweat off everyone's brow, and immediately took a couple of steps in front of Dirk.

"Hey, wait, hold on! You're... Dead god tier Calliope, right?"

She nods.

"And you're going to... Kill Dirk?"

She nods again. John folds his arms over his chest and shakes his head. For some reason, even though John's back is to Dirk, ripe for a sucker-stabbing, Dirk Strider can't bring himself to unsheathe his katana. His fingers twitch with the extreme effort, all of that mastery, years of training worth absolutely nothing. Oh, no wait, he grabs it! And then his arms freeze again. When I type a sentence talking about how the previous chapters from his point of view were mere serendipity, me opening the lens to peek with a microscope into his head, and that he never had any control, he prepares to lose it.

His freak out never comes. "That's not going to happen right now. Okay?"

"John, what are you doing?" Karkat asks, in that hoarse yell-whisper voice that he tries to do whenever he's speaking quietly, unaware of the fact that literally everyone in the room can hear him, including the slowly stirring Terezi crumpled in a heap in the corner.

"I mean, I know he kidnapped Rose and brainwashed her and put her in a robot and... Did you beat up Terezi? Dirk, did you beat up Terezi?" John asks, over his shoulder. Dirk grunts - I haven't let him speak yet - and John understands that as the yes he needs. "And all that other stuff, but, I mean, I talked to Dirk a couple of times. I... Talked to a dead one, too. I don't think he'd do this on purpose. It's not like him. We at least need the answers. What if this is something bigger than Dirk, and we fuck up somehow?"

Dirk's voice finally breaks as his lips are freed, ever so temporarily, from my grasp. "Goes to show what you know, Egbert." He almost spits, and his joints lock up again in a way that makes it seem like he's simply poised to strike, and not literally straining against the bonds of authorial intent with every morsel of effort in his body. Man, for the few words I allow him to say he really picked a doozy, didn't he?

"John, Dirk is an existential threat to not only Paradox Space but the continued happiness of you and your friends. He has committed crimes bordering on the monstrous. Were this in one of your human courts, he would likely be given the death penalty." Calliope explained, trying to reason with the bleeding heart heir.

"Didn't we get rid of those?" Dave whispers to Karkat.

"Nah." Davebot replies. He knows that they're talking about different Earth Cs at this point, but doesn't comment further. God, all this red is a little confusing.

"No, we definitely did." Karkat, the one person who would know anything about this, said a little louder. Davebot shrugs.

"John, I know your heart is in the right place but Dirk really, really, _really_ has to be stopped!" Jade pleaded, voice a little weak from years of disuse. Jake looked like he wanted to say something, but he refrained. His lips pried themselves open just a teeny crack, and then shut, so John turned to him.

"Yeah, Jake?"

"I... gosh, I, um... Fuck." Jake announced to the room, which had gone to full-on "convince John to not be a hero and take a black-hole-bullet for Dirk Strider" mode. "I... am going to pass for now!"

"Right, well, yeah, this has sort of become a whole thing, hasn't it? Let's all air our grievances out." John said, laughing at his little multifaceted wind pun. Calliope sighs, her fingers glowing green, and swings John out of the way with a flick of her telekinetic wrist. The weight of a black hole, even small, is overwhelming once it progresses past a microscopic phase. It hovered dangerously close to Dirk's head, and then, it evaporated in a swish of blue and white. Where Calliope was once standing, John had taken her place, sending her far enough away that she wouldn't be able to interrupt. "I'm not sure why she thought that was smart."

Everyone was more baffled than startled or awkward now. Everything felt like it was going in a way that was _severely_ off course, except for Aradia, who was enjoying the shenanigans, having herself a pleasant little chuckle over by the corner. "Aradia, would you mind grabbing us some drinks from the Alchemiter?" John asked, in a way that was disarmingly casual.

"Sure!" Spoke she of infinite repose and cheerfulness in excessively deadly situations. Most of the upcoming pipes of voices were for apple juice, in some way, shape, or form. John took a quick headcount while Aradia fluttered out of the room.

"Okay, Dave, Davebot, Roxy, Rosebot, Kanaya, Karkat, Jake, Jade, me, Aradia, Terezi, and Dirk. You okay, Terezi?" He spoke out loud, counting off people on his fingertips, sitting down cross-legged on the floor. Terezi shot him a groggy, loose thumbs up. "Let's try not to get super loud for Terezi's sake, okay? We'll go in order, and get everyone's opinions, and then figure something out."

John pointed to Dave, and the boy looks so shocked that you could see it behind his glasses. Dave thought this was going to be simple. Board a spaceship, fight the brother/son he had disowned, cut his head off for good. Three years with a laser focus on the goal, and yet the first time he saw Dirk again it all fell apart, and now here John was, making him doubt himself even more. Even after explaining the stakes to John in several already difficult conversations, here he was, mask of bravado about to crack entirely. "Dirk's... Dirk, you've done some absolutely uncool things. I thought this was going to be some cool father son fight like Darth Vader-"

"Really? That's the comparison you're going with?" Dirk and John both ask at the same time. Pay no attention to the giggling author behind the curtain, even while Dirk scowls at him.

"Just some cool action fight, and then we'd, like, throw you in a cell and figure out what to do with you. But now that we're here I... Don't think I know."

"That's alright, Dave, we'll figure something out. Davebot?"

"Considering all the ominous foreshadowing surrounding my creation, I'm going to go with no vote to prevent the obvious Admiral Ackbar moment from happening." He says, sounding a bit like a lunatic. Everyone kind of sort of gets it. There's no protest.

Roxy doesn't say anything. John complimented his hair earlier, and he said thanks, and he hadn't said anything since. John looks at him, hand frozen in gesture, while his eyes remain unable to decide if they want to be open or shut. He silently moves hands to point to Rosebot.

"I know how this will sound, what with me in such a exceptionally Dirkian shell, but we absolutely, under any circumstances, cannot allow this particular mission of ours to fail. The basic ability of all intelligent beings in all real and hypothetical existences to give a shit is at stake here. That is where I stand on the matter, and that is where I will remain." Rosebot says, her voice tinny, mechanical. It echoes in the way that a voice shouldn't. It glows and glimmers. John looks at her, and sees nothing. It's a nothing that scares him.

Kanaya thumbs a tube of lipstick dangerously, like it's a bomb that's about to go off. It's an absolutely silly notion, considering that it's far more dangerous than a simple bomb in her hands. She remains as calm as a boiling teakettle can possibly get when the pressure is high enough that the lid might blow off, even with the hissing, venting steam. "If you give me the opportunity, I will chainsaw Dirk Strider in half vertically, starting from his vulnerable human genitalia."

Only Rosebot seems shocked by this. She reaches out for a little bit, murmurs a "Kanaya...?", confused as to what could _possibly_ provoke this reaction. Remember, nobody here is working with a full deck except for me. Dirk is second closest, and it's not his turn to speak yet.

"Karkat?" John asks, passing an open palm through the air in Karkat's direction. At some point this has gone from "airing grievances" to just "voting on Dirk's fate", not that I'm going to be stopping that.

"I vote interrogate. You're an absolute grubfuck scumsucker, Dirk, and don't get me wrong, I'd love to mop all your viscera off the floor with your puffed out pajama pants, but revenge killings have never solved anything." Karkat says, remembering once again how to yell. "Not sporadic revenge killings, in any case."

Jake meekly raises his hand, asking for permission to speak in a line he was next in anyway. "I am going to second Karkat's proposition." He says quietly.

Jade puffs out her lips. "One one hand, you have to be stopped! But on the other hand, I can't think of a way you can--" Terezi grunts a little in response. I wonder if she can still hear me? Her nod, seemingly apropos of nothing, confirms my suspicions. I wonder then, to nobody in particular except you, the readers, if she can tell that Dirk can't move or speak because of me. She nods again, and we return to Jade's dialogue. "--So I vote for interrogation."

John points to himself, chuckles a little, and puts out such a confident smile that it's genuinely disarming. "I'll just go with whatever you guys say, unless we have a tie."

Aradia smiles, sips something thoughtfully, and echoes John's sentiment. "I'll help tiebreak!"

Terezi's voice is hoarse, worn out from off-screen yelling. "Kill him."

Finally, Dirk. He looks at Terezi, then at John, and then at me. "Kill me."

John furrows his brow, and then counts on his fingers some more. "That's three for interrogation, three for killing, two people pledged to tiebreak, three no votes, and one "Don't kill him". Um, has anyone who hasn't voted come up with an opinion?"

Roxy, holding in a giggle of some kind, lets it come out in a spurt. "John, I love you but this is a little silly. And, uh, kind of fucked up? You're taking a vote on someone's life like it's an election. Doesn't this, like, rub anyone else the wrong way?"

John turns his head to him and wiggles his ankles a little into a more comfortable position, while Roxy sips his drink. "Would you rather I let all of you, everyone looking to do something different, just go loose on him?"

Roxy rubs his chin, and then shakes his head. "I'm sorry, John, I just... can't do this." He says, getting up and captchaloguing her empty cup. He laughs a little bit, makes a choked nose, and leaves the room.

John turns to Dave and Davebot. They both look at each other and shake their heads. Still no vote.

John sighs and gets back up, withdrawing the Vrillyhoo hammer from his sylladex and letting the head come to thump on the floor. Everyone else seems absolutely frozen. "Well, Aradia? I guess we're tiebreaking, then."

Aradia smiles, and turns her head to face something nobody else can see. She winks at the camera.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to steal Dirk's fun little game and leave [A Strawpoll](https://www.strawpoll.me/18282649) for you to fill out. Please answer it if you can.

**Author's Note:**

> All comments, kudos, bookmarks, and views are seen, noted, and greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/classpectanon)  
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